PC power supply . SATA power adapter from PSU to my IDE hard drive?

I've never seen them, but then I've never given it any thought. As you say, it's usually the opposite problem. This is may be a daft question, but doesn't it have the standard Molex connectors as well? If not it would seem very strange as they're needed for optical media drives and, of course, standard ATA hard drives.

Dave

The PC does have other Molex connectors and plenty of them at that.

I was just trying to run my hard drive separately from my case fans, as it's been suggested to me to do that.

It's quite a powerful PSU at 500watts but I've been told that fans under load (perhaps dusty or failing) can steal current from the hard drive.

It looks like I'll be attaching the HDD to a molex connector.

Cheers

Darren

The fans will not affect the power going to your hard drives - unless they are several sizes bigger than the drives themselves...Even if they fail or you fill them with treacle (I have found some very strange things in computer cases, over the years..).

Modern drives that is. If you have some really old full-height drives then even a 500W supply may not be enough, fans or not. We used to have individual power switches on each drive because the 1000W power supply couldn't handle the current of them all starting at once. However, such drives aren't as common these days.

How many actual cable groups with Molex connectors are there? The wires all go to the same points in the PSU, ie 5v 12v and Gnd. If you have only one cable with several Molex connectors on, then a large fan might cause a slight voltage drop along the cable, though whether this would cause problems is debatable.

If there's more than one cable with Molex connectors, just use one for the fans and one for the hard drive if it makes you feel happier. The fan might still cause the PSU voltage to dip slightly, but that's unavoidable and won't likely cause problems.

Having said that, I'd be surprised if the average case fan would cause any problems. They usually consume less than an Amp, and I must say I've never given any of this a thought and I run three large case fans. I think whoever told you about fans stealing hard drive current is being a little, shall we say, 'overcautious'!

Dave

There are adaptors from SATA to IDE that I have seen. Any cheap electronics store should have em. If you live in California, go to Fry's.

In addition to the SATA power leads, you should quite a few normal power connectors

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